The Secular Bar-Mode Instability in Rapidly Rotating Stars Revisited

Uniformly rotating, homogeneous, incompressible Maclaurin spheroids that spin sufficiently rapidly are secularly unstable to nonaxisymmetric, bar-mode perturbations when viscosity is present. The intuitive explanation is that energy dissipation by viscosity can drive an unstable spheroid to a stable, triaxial configuration of lower energy - a Jacobi ellipsoid. But what about rapidly rotating compressible stars? Unlike incompressible stars, which contain no internal energy and therefore immediately liberate all the energy dissipated by viscosity, compressible stars have internal energy and can retain the dissipated energy as internal heat. Now compressible stars that rotate sufficiently rapidly and also manage to liberate this dissipated energy very quickly are known to be unstable to bar-mode perturbations, like their incompressible counterparts. But what is the situation for rapidly rotating compressible stars that have very long cooling timescales, so that all the energy dissipated by viscosity is retained as heat, whereby the total energy of the star remains constant on a secular (viscous) evolution timescale? Are such stars also unstable to the nonlinear growth of bar modes, or is the viscous heating sufficient to cause them to expand, drive down the ratio of rotational kinetic to gravitational potential energy T/|W| ~ 1/R, where R is the equatorial radius, and turn off the instability before it gets underway? If the instability still arises in such stars, at what rotation rate do they become unstable, and to what final state do they evolve? We provide answers to these questions in the context of the compressible ellipsoid model for rotating stars. The results should serve as useful guides for numerical simulations in 3+1 dimensions for rotating stars containing viscosity.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ 613, 1213-1220, 200

Recent developments in Vorton Theory

This article provides a concise overview of recent theoretical results concerning the theory of vortons, which are defined to be (centrifugally supported) equilibrium configurations of (current carrying) cosmic string loops. Following a presentation of the results of work on the dynamical evolution of small circular string loops, whose minimum energy states are the simplest examples of vortons, recent order of magnitude estimates of the cosmological density of vortons produced in various kinds of theoretical scenario are briefly summarised.Comment: 6 pages Latex. Contribution to 1996 Cosmology Meeting, Peyresq, Franc

Chaotic string-capture by black hole

We consider a macroscopic charge-current carrying (cosmic) string in the background of a Schwarzschild black hole. The string is taken to be circular and is allowed to oscillate and to propagate in the direction perpendicular to its plane (that is parallel to the equatorial plane of the black hole). Nurmerical investigations indicate that the system is non-integrable, but the interaction with the gravitational field of the black hole anyway gives rise to various qualitatively simple processes like "adiabatic capture" and "string transmutation".Comment: 13 pages Latex + 3 figures (not included), Nordita 93/55

Renormalisation of gravitational self interaction for wiggly strings

It is shown that for any elastic string model with energy density $U$ and tension $T$, the divergent contribution from gravitational self interaction can be allowed for by an action renormalisation proportional to $(U-T)^2$. This formula is applied to the important special case of a bare model of the transonic type (characterised by a constant value of the product $UT$) that represents the macroscopically averaged effect of shortwavelength wiggles on an underlying microscopic model of the Nambu-Goto type (characterised by $U=T$).Comment: 11 pages, Latex; original 8 page version extended to include estimates of relevant orders of magnitude. To be published in Physical Review,

Poly-essential and general Hyperelastic World (brane) models

This article provides a unified treatment of an extensive category of non-linear classical field models whereby the universe is represented (perhaps as a brane in a higher dimensional background) in terms of a structure of a mathematically convenient type describable as hyperelastic, for which a complete set of equations of motion is provided just by the energy-momentum conservation law. Particular cases include those of a perfect fluid in quintessential backgrounds of various kinds, as well as models of the elastic solid kind that has been proposed to account for cosmic acceleration. It is shown how an appropriately generalised Hadamard operator can be used to construct a symplectic structure that controles the evolution of small perturbations, and that provides a characteristic equation governing the propagation of weak discontinuities of diverse (extrinsic and extrinsic) kinds. The special case of a poly-essential model - the k-essential analogue of an ordinary polytropic fluid - is examined and shown to be well behaved (like the fluid) only if the pressure to density ratio $w$ is positive.Comment: 16 pages Latex, Contrib. to 10th Peyresq Pysics Meeting, June 2005: Micro and Macro Structures of Spacetim

Dynamics of cosmic strings and springs; a covariant formulation

A general family of charge-current carrying cosmic string models is investigated. In the special case of circular configurations in arbitrary axially symmetric gravitational and electromagnetic backgrounds the dynamics is determined by simple point particle Hamiltonians. A certain "duality" transformation relates our results to previous ones, obtained by Carter et. al., for an infinitely long open stationary string in an arbitrary stationary background.Comment: 11 pages, Latex, Nordita preprint 93/28

Dynamical Stability of Witten Rings

The dynamical stability of cosmic rings, or vortons, is investigated for the particular equation of state given by the Witten bosonic model. It is found that there exists a finite range of the state parameter for which the vorton states are actually stable against dynamical perturbations. Inclusion of the electromagnetic self action into the equation of state slightly shrinks the stability region but otherwise yields no qualitative difference. If the Witten bosonic model represents a good approximation for more realistic string models, then the cosmological vorton excess problem can only be solved by assuming either that strings are formed at low energy scales or that some quantum instability may develop at a sufficient rate.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX-ReVTeX (v.3), 2 figures available upon request, DAMTP R-94/1

Capabilities and limitations of existing MST radars: Poker Flat

Designed as a prototype system to continuously monitor the atmosphere up to approximately 100 km, the Poker Flat MST radar began operating in 1979 at a relatively low sensitivity. In almost continuous operation since then, the system is steadily increasing in sensitivity to its ultimate design characteristics. Current and final parameters are listed. The advantages of its modular design, which uses 64 transmitting modules distributed through the 200 mx 200 m antenna array include: easy maintenance, beam switching using very low power switching, air cooled transmitting tubes, lower feedline costs, and no moving parts. Continuous, uninterrupted operation ( 4 years) and less man-made interference because of the remote location) are other assets. Most disadvantages are related to its not-yet-finished status, climate, moose excursions, and operating expenses

The NOAA TOGA antenna array

The Aeronomy Laboratory recently installed a 100 x 100 meter array antenna with limited beam steering on Christmas Island as a part of the TOGA (Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere) program. The array and the associated beam steering and indicating hardware are described

Bogomol'nyi Limit For Magnetic Vortices In Rotating Superconductor

This work is the sequel of a previous investigation of stationary and cylindrically symmetric vortex configurations for simple models representing an incompressible non-relativistic superconductor in a rigidly rotating background. In the present paper, we carry out our analysis with a generalized Ginzburg-Landau description of the superconductor, which provides a prescription for the radial profile of the normal density within the vortex. Within this framework, it is shown that the Bogomol'nyi limit condition marking the boundary between type I and type II behavior is unaffected by the rotation of the background.Comment: 7 pages, uses RevTeX, submitted to Phys.Rev.